Today is Swamies Mahasamdhi day and for sure we all think a lot of him and con­tact him very close in our hearts… still miss­ing him and always lov­ing him and remem­ber­ing the beau­ti­ful knowl­edge he gave to us. For some rea­son it seems, that he wants me to share some­thing with you today:

I once gave Swami the promise to take care for some­one in a spe­cial way at least once a week. For some time I vis­ited an old lady, who was so lonely and really needed some­one to talk to and to spend some time with her. That was really nice for both of us, but after a while her health sit­u­a­tion got more worse, so her fam­ily decided to engage a nurse, who could care for her 24 hours a day.

So I decided to look whether there was some­one else, who would need a lit­tle help for some hours a week even more…
In a spe­cial social insti­tu­tion here in Salzburg, Aus­tria, I was told, that there is a kind of orphan­age for refugee kids, called “clear­ing house”, a strange name I think. It is a house, where kids from dif­fer­ent nations in Africa or Asia, who came here with­out there par­ents or other fam­ily mem­bers, get shel­ter until they get an off­i­cal asy­lum or until they are adults and may be send back to their coun­tries, when an asy­lum is refused. I was asked to help a boy from Afghanistan, who was an illit­er­ate, to do some exer­ci­ces with him weekly, so he would learn Ger­man more easy. I really was look­ing for­ward to do so, because to get the oppor­tu­nity to help­ing kids in need really seemed to be some­thing very spe­cial!
I had no idea, how these meet­ings would be. I have to say, to do this (for me a small act of change, i.e. one or two hours a week), was one of the most beau­ti­ful and sense­ful things i ever was able to do…
We prac­ticed the alpha­bet each week, had small lessons of read­ing and writ­ing, but above all, we spent lot of time talk­ing to each other, about our dif­fer­ent cul­tures, about God and reli­gions and then also a lot about what this kid had gone through dur­ing the long time, i.e. sev­eral years of his get­away from Afghanistan. He was twelve years old, when his older brother sent him away. The pain this boy had gone through was unbe­liev­able. Often these kids are send by fam­ily mem­bers, with just few dol­lars in their pock­ets, hop­ing they would reach Europe some­how, to finally be able to get asy­lum, so that in best case the whole fam­ily is able to come to Europe, too.
Some­times the sto­ries he told, where nearly heart­break­ing for me, espe­cially after i knew him bet­ter, then i always thought of Swami, how he would often smile, while some­one told him a kind of pain… i knew, it was not good, when i would start to cry, or some tears would fall. So it worked, i could lis­ten to him, just open­ing my heart and look­ing at him, maybe chant­ing a mantra inwardly or just talk­ing to him. Each week i tried to fin­ish the lessons with a smile on his face. It really worked. We laughed a lot… actu­ally, most of time we had a lot of fun! He would call me “Mrs teacher”, but later i heard from his super­wiser, that he would talk about meet­ings with his “Mum”. These kids just want a Mum. they are long­ing for a fam­ily, for any­one belong­ing to them. Of course, we can­not be their real Mum or Dad, but we can feel inside and give them the feel­ing they are a part of our heart-​family, of our big global fam­ily and that is so easy to do. Really a small easy act of change, but my expe­ri­ence is, it can make such a dif­fer­ence…
Mean­while this boy, thanks Baba and Swami and Mother Divine, got his off­i­cal state of asy­lum in Aus­tria, i was so happy about that… He is a good friend of my fam­ily now, we are still in con­tact with each other. Offi­cially he is an addult now. Nobody knows his real age.

Now, there is another boy i visit each week, i do this for some years now. It´s so beau­ti­ful to be able to. Nev­er­the­less, now i have to wait until next Thurs­day again, until this boy will return from his offi­cial inter­view from Vienna. Again i pray a lot to Baba and Swamiji and Mother Divine to give shel­ter to this young life… I pray, that he needs to stay here, because his life would be in dan­ger, when he would have to go back to his coun­try. He has no con­tact to any fam­ily mem­ber, he thinks his father is killed already and he is not able to find his mother any­more… I try to do what i can with just a lit­tle help. May be, who ever reads this, you can help me pray­ing, so that he also can stay here in Europe. Would be so beau­ti­ful!!! thank you for read­ing this and giv­ing me the oppor­tu­nity to share. with love. Veronika